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Hamas & Hezbollah Attacks on Israel Increase; Saudi Arabia Threatens Iran Over Houthis

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A military coalition led by Saudi Arabia on Monday threatened retaliation against Iran after Houthi rebels fired a barrage of missiles from Yemen, AFP reported.

Saudi forces said they intercepted seven missiles on Sunday, including over the capital Riyadh, in a deadly escalation that coincided with the third anniversary of the coalition’s intervention in Yemen.

The Saudis accused their regional rival Iran of being behind the attack.

Displaying wreckage at a news conference in Riyadh of what it said were fragments of those ballistic missiles, the coalition claimed forensic analysis showed they were supplied to Houthi rebels by their ally Iran.

Houthi militia forces have fired 83 ballistic missiles towards Saudi Arabia since the country entered the Yemen civil war in 2015, an official has said.

“The missiles launched against Saudi territory were smuggled from Iran,” coalition spokesman Turki al-Malki told reporters.

We “reserve the right to respond against Iran at the right time and right place”, he warned.

The missile strikes resulted in the first reported fatality from Houthi fire in the Saudi capital.

Egyptian national Abdul-Moteleb Ahmed, 38, died instantly in his bed when what appeared to be burning shrapnel struck his ramshackle room in Riyadh’s Um al-Hammam district, leaving a gaping hole in the roof, witnesses told AFP.

Witnesses on the ground said they heard loud explosions and saw bright flashes in the sky.

Three other Egyptian laborers in the same room were wounded and hospitalized, they said.

The Houthis said on their Al-Masirah television that Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport was among the targets.

It has long been believed that Iran is planning to use the Houthis to take over Yemen and seize the key strategic port of Aden, which controls the entrance to the Red Sea and ultimately to the Israeli resort city of Eilat.

Iran denies it is backing the Houthis. Recently, U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley brought Security Council envoys to a U.S. military base in Washington to view missile parts that the U.S. calls evidence of Iran’s illicit transfer of prohibited missiles to the Houthis.

Sunday’s missile launch coincides with the third anniversary of the Saudi-led coalition that has launched airstrikes and a ground operation to try to push the Houthis out of Yemen.

A Saudi-led military coalition intervened in Yemen on March 26, 2015 to try to restore the government of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi after the Houthis and their allies took over large parts of the country, including the capital Sanaa.

About 10,000 Yemenis have been killed and 53,000 wounded since the start of the coalition intervention in Yemen.

On Sunday, the United States strongly condemned Houthi missile attacks directed at Saudi Arabia. On Monday, the State Department said that the United States supports “the right of our Saudi partners to defend their borders against these threats”.

Saudi officials said at the time that the attack “may amount to an act of war.”

Human rights groups have alleged that Saudi rockets have obliterated entire civilian neighborhoods in and around Sana’a. They say that it has also compounded Yemen’s humanitarian crisis, including thousands of civilian deaths, a looming famine, fuel shortages, and a cholera epidemic.

The Houthis seized the capital in 2014, sending the Yemeni government into exile in Saudi Arabia. U.N. peace talks have been unsuccessful.

Last week the State Department approved nearly $1 billion in new arms sales for Saudi Arabia as Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman continued his American tour.

Congress was notified last Thursday of the deal, which includes a $670 million sale of more than 6,600 TOW anti-tank missiles and a $300 million sale of spare vehicle parts for the Royal Saudi Land Forces Ordnance Corps.

“This proposed sale will support U.S. foreign policy and national security objectives by improving the security of a friendly country which has been, and continues to be, an important force for political stability and economic growth in the Middle East,” the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which oversees foreign military sales, said.

Saudi Arabia is the largest buyer of American-made weapons, and the United States sees the country as an ally in the fight against al-Qaida and Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria.

“Iran has not been treating that part of the world or the world itself appropriately,” Trump said alongside Crown Prince Mohammed in the Oval Office. “A lot of bad things are happening in Iran.’

“Iran has not been treating that part of the world or the world itself appropriately,” Trump said alongside Crown Prince Mohammed in the Oval Office. “A lot of bad things are happening in Iran.’

Citing the near demise of ISIS in the Middle East, the president declared that the U.S. military forces will be departing from “certain areas that we’ve wanted to get out of for a long period time,” saying “other countries can handle it. At this point they’ll be able to handle it.”

The crown prince responded, “That’s why we are here today — to be sure we’ve tackled all the opportunities and achieve it and also get rid of all the threats facing” the United States, Saudi Arabia “and the whole world.”

On March 15th, it was reported that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman likened Iran’s supreme leader to Adolf Hitler and said Saudi Arabia will quickly develop a nuclear bomb if Iran does the same.

“Saudi Arabia does not want to acquire any nuclear bomb, but without a doubt if Iran developed a nuclear bomb, we will follow suit as soon as possible,” Prince Mohammed said in a recently aired CBS 60 Minutes interview.

During a meeting last Thursday with the Saudi crown prince at the Pentagon, Defense Secretary James Mattis gave Riyadh a vote of confidence.

“We believe that Saudi Arabia is part of the solution,’’ Mattis said. “They have stood by the United Nations-recognized government, and we are going to end this war. That is the bottom line. And we are going to end it on positive terms for the people of Yemen but also security for the nations in the peninsula.’’

In also demonstrating its stalwart support for Saudi Arabian interest in the region, the US Senate last Tuesday voted down a resolution seeking an end to U.S. support for Saudi Arabia’s campaign in Yemen’s civil war. The Senate voted 55-44 to dismiss the resolution, which sought for the first time to take advantage of a provision in the 1973 War Powers Act that allows any senator to introduce a resolution on whether to withdraw U.S. armed forces from a conflict not authorized by Congress.

During Senate debate before the vote, some backers called the three-year-long conflict in Yemen a “humanitarian catastrophe,” which they blamed on the Saudis.

Independent Senator Bernie Sanders noted the deaths of thousands of civilians, displacement of millions, famine and potentially the largest cholera outbreak in history because of the conflict.

“That is what is going on in Yemen today as a result of the Saudi-led war there,” Sanders said.

Senator Mike Lee, a Republican backer of the resolution said that Saudi Arabia is an indispensable partner in the region, without which the United States would be less successful.”

The vote was largely along party lines, although a handful of Democrats voted with the majority Republicans to kill the measure, and a handful of Republicans supported the failed effort to let it move ahead.

Meanwhile, Iranian backed terrorists operating in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip fired multiple rockets at Israeli towns in the western Negev Sunday night, with warning sirens sounding across the Hof Ashkleon and Shaar Hanegev regions, as well as inside the town of Sderot, according to an INN report.

Iron Dome anti-projectile batteries responded to the attacks, shooting down multiple rockets.

Hamas forces in the Gaza Strip have conducted massive training exercises over the past few days, including mock rocket attacks featuring the firing of projectiles over the Mediterranean.

INN reported that on Sunday night the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) attacked two observation posts in northern Gaza using a tank.

“The IDF considers the Hamas terrorist organization responsible for everything happening inside and coming out of the Gaza Strip, and views with severity of any type of fire at Israeli territory,” the IDF Spokesperson said.

On Saturday night, the Israel Air Force targeted a terror objective in a military compound in Rafah in southern Gaza, belonging to the Hamas terrorist organization.

The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit said the airstrike was in retaliation for an incident in which the security fence between Israel and Gaza was damaged and there was an attempt to set fire to an engineering vehicle.

On Sunday it was reported that IDF planes dropped leaflets over the Gaza Strip warning Gazans not to approach the fence on the border with Israel.

A social media campaign dubbed ‘The Great Return March’ has attempted to bring thousands of Gazans together to March on the Israeli border this Friday, March 30, which the Palestinian Arabs mark as ‘Land Day.’

The leaflets dropped by the IDF call on Gazan families not to come within 300 meters (985 feet) of the fence during the demonstration, warning that “whoever comes near will put himself at risk.”

The leaflets also included a map of Gaza in which the line residents should not cross is marked in grey.

One Arab journalist mocked the IDF’s efforts to prevent confrontations this Friday on Twitter, calling the leaflets “a waste of ink and paper.”

By: Walter Metuth

balance of natureDonate

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